Bharti Airtel, an Indian telecom service provider has partnered with Karbonn Mobile, an Indian smartphone brand to bring an affordable 4G smartphone at an effective price of a feature phone. In order to counter Jio Phone, a 4G feature phone introduced by Reliance Jio, Airtel is now offering a smartphone at an effective price of Rs. 1,399. The smartphone launched is called the Karbonn A40 Indian.
Raj Pudipeddi, Director – Consumer Business & CMO, Bharti Airtel said, “As the market leader and pioneer of 4G services in India, Airtel’s aspiration is to digitally empower every Indian with high speed data access. We are delighted to partner with Karbonn to remove barriers to smartphone adoption and enable millions of Indians to leapfrog to a full touchscreen smartphone experience. We plan to partner with multiple manufacturers to bring affordable smartphone options to the market and build an ‘open ecosystem’ of low cost devices. This is yet another step in our ongoing journey to deeply understand customers and bring innovation that delights them.”
To get the new Karbonn A40 Indian from Airtel, one will need to make a down payment of Rs. 2,899. Once the purchase is done, the customer will need to make 36 continuous recharges of Rs. 169. After 18 months of purchase, the customer will get a cash refund of Rs. 500. Later, after 36 months, the customer will again get a cash back of Rs. 100 making the total cash back at Rs. 1,500. Purchasing the device at Rs. 2,899 and getting Rs. 1,500 as cash back will make the price of the smartphone at Rs. 1,399. However, unlike the Jio Phone, the ownership of the smartphone is with the customer and there is no need to return the device to Airtel or Karbonn Mobiles at any point to claim the cash benefit.
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As far as the specifications are concerned, the Karbonn A40 Indian features a 4-inch IPS LCD display. The smartphone is powered by a 1.3GHz processor. The device comes with 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage which is further expandable up to 32GB using a microSD card. The dual-sim smartphone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat operating system. The Karbonn A40 Indian is backed by a 1,400mAh battery.
In the camera department, the phone features a 2-megapixel camera at the back. Up front, there is a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera.